In a September 4, 2014 interview in Esquire Magazine, the legendary Gene Simmons of KISS spoke about the demise of rock, and the inability of new musicians to garner success in today’s music world.

When he talked about the difficulty for a 15 year-old’s garage band to achieve success in the music industry because their music is recorded and shared by either a neighbor, friend, or even a fellow band member, I immediately thought of my own son playing his bass guitar with his friends in the basement, and dreaming of a possible future that Simmons says just doesn’t exist anymore.  Simmons explains what the problem is:

The masses do not recognize file-sharing and downloading as stealing because there’s a copy left behind for you – it’s not that copy that’s the problem, it’s the other one that someone received but didn’t pay for.  The problem is that nobody will pay you for the 10,000 hours you put in to create what you created.  I can only imagine the frustration of all that work, and having no one value it enough to pay you for it.

It’s very sad for new bands.  My heart goes out to them.  They just don’t have a chance.  If you play guitar, it’s almost impossible.  You’re better off not even learning how to play guitar or write songs, and just singing in the shower and auditioning for The X Factor.  And I’m not slamming The X Factor, or even pop singers.  But where’s Bob Dylan?  Where’s the next Beatles?  Where are the songwriters?  Where are the creators?  Many of them now have to work behind the scenes to prop up pop acts and write their stuff for them.

A March 2013 University of Lund study reviewed one of the global file sharing sites, Pirate Bay,  to determine who was involved in pirating various types of media, including music, movies, TV shows, sports material, games and software, e-books, and pornography.  The study found that 93.8 percent of the 75,616 file sharers who responded were male, with almost half of the respondents between the ages of 18-24.  The study also found that music files were the most prevalent with 46,554 files shared, despite the availability of “free” legal streaming solutions.  As to why more males than females share files, an August 5, 2014, editorial in TechCentral surmised that women are more risk-averse  than men when it comes to pirating files, even though music pirating is a low-risk activity with little chance that those sharing files will be prosecuted.

In December 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) found that some Napster users had figured out how to illegally share music files, and sued the company for copyright infringement.  On July 27, 2000, a federal judge in San Francisco shut Napster’s website down, noting that the company had acknowledged that they encouraged “wholesale infringement” against music copyrights.  On September 8, 2003, RIAA filed its first suit against individual users of the file sharing systems who were illegally downloading music files.  Napster got the message and now operates as a music subscription service, paying copyright fees to artists, creators, and owners.

The music industry continues to make efforts to combat illegal file sharing of music by monitoring file sharing sites like LimeWire, BitTorrent and Ares and issuing take-down notices to ISPs when they detect any illegal file sharing activity.  In addition, on April 26, 2012, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that it had seized more than 70,000 pirated copies of music and movies valued at nearly $1 million.  In commenting on the seizure, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Special Agent Clark Settles stated, “Commercial piracy and product counterfeiting undermine the U.S. economy, rob Americans of jobs, stifle American innovation and promote other types of crime.  Intellectual property theft amounts to economic sabotage, which is why HSI will continue to aggressively pursue product counterfeiters and those who sell counterfeit products.”

Authors of original creative work, including musical recordings, eligible for copyright are not required to register their work with the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO).  Their work is copyright protected from the moment the work is created.  However, the USCO recommends registering the works in order to have documentation of the facts of a copyright on public record, have a certificate of registration, and provide some eligibility for statutory damages and attorney fees in the event litigation over the work occurs

Regardless of whether a song is created by a large recording label, independently distributed by a budding young artist, or surreptitiously recorded and posted on a file-sharing site; the sharing of copyrighted music without adequate compensation to the owner of the copyright is illegal, and steals the intellectual property of the creators.  And, if Gene Simmons is correct, the theft and illegal distribution of music through file-sharing sites is putting the success of new innovative garage bands at risk.